My question is based more on the fact that some of the theory crafting boggles my mind, but i've read in here that haste has cap points, with the sole purpose of how many various types of heals can be fit into the riptide CD.
Haste does have soft cap points, but the number of casts you can fit into a Riptide cooldown isn't that meaningful a thing to measure for a variety of reasons.
Using that metric assumes that you cast Riptide on cooldown, every cooldown, regardless of all other factors, because it's the best possible option for all possible situations. When Riptide is available to cast, I will often choose it. It's a powerful tool and interacts with my other heals. Just because it's available doesn't mean I have to use it, though.
Using that metric also assumes that aside from Riptide, you only cast one other type of heal. As soon as you start mixing LHW, CH, and HW together in response to an actual raid situation (not to mention things like latency, reaction time, moving around, interrupting, purging, hexing, and refreshing shields & totems) it becomes much less precise and the plateau points illustrated in the graph above aren't relevant anymore.
The caps that haste actually has are the various levels of haste that will reduce your global cooldown (and LHW cast time) to 1.0 seconds. The most important haste rating is the one that accounts for moonkin / paladin buff and WoA totem, since those are standard buffs you can expect to have. Bloodlust / Heroism will reduce the rating needed to hit the cap, but you probably won't want to gear for it.
As to how you personally should choose stats to gear for, your best option is to download and use the shaman_hep combatlog parser. It will show you what stats will provide more benefit to the heals you personally cast, in your specific raiding situations. Until you have logs of your own to analyze, you can look at logs other people have posted. My most recent log post, for example, includes logs from two shaman with different healing styles, and shows different stat recommendations for the two.
Suet, I personally don't switch any gear with the situational exception of the hw relic if I know I will be hw bombing enough that oom is a possibility. In gereal even though crit is a little better for hw than ch I haven't found myself making a crit set due to all the raid buffs and talents. I still consider haste superior to crit for tank healing.
Suet, I personally don't switch any gear with the situational exception of the hw relic if I know I will be hw bombing enough that oom is a possibility. In gereal even though crit is a little better for hw than ch I haven't found myself making a crit set due to all the raid buffs and talents. I still consider haste superior to crit for tank healing.
I will definitely try the shaman_hep tool since i've just been trying to analyze my own usage through counters like recount, not very efficient.
Do you find that the same is true for raid healing in current content including ulduar? I want to make sure that I can fill either role, without having to carry two full sets of gear with me, but if it's not possible, i'll gladly carry the gear to get the job done effectively.
My guild no longer runs ulduar but hep weights won't change by so much that you will need 2 full sets unless you go oom all the time casting hw. You can get rid of things like the 4pc t8 bonus and use 2pc 8 and 2pc t9 if you are mostly tank healing but I think it's a good idea to get both sets and see which you like best.
You can make dramatic changes in your gear just by changing trinkets and relic for certain encounters. Probably you already do this. This should be enough to make you not need separate sets of gear or a second spec for the tank and raid healing roles -- which benefit from similar stats anyway. Changing glyphs can also be a powerful tool. On my server glyphs cost much less than flasks, and the cost decreases to almost nothing if you have a scribe friend or alt.
Somewhat regarding the poster above me... I've just recently broken my 2pc T8 bonus for an offset 245 chest and I can say that I'm starting to feel the loss of the set bonus, actually automatically trying to fire off my RT at it's old 5sec cooldown rate only to get hit by the nasty 'Spell not ready yet'. Now, even though the new offset chest is sweeter purely statwise, I'm wondering how valuable are you guys finding the above mentioned set bonus. Having a hard time to figure out it's 'worth'. Cheers up front
edit : not the post above me, but the one before, I'm a slowpoke at posting replies
@ Zulwark - people who talk about "healing rotation" (which I think is possibly the most stupid concept anyone has come up with) seem to like it.
Yes, its nice to be able to keep up on a tank, maybe two if damage elsewhere isn't that nasty. But using it every single cooldown without fail is a bit stupid, and frankly very bad for your HPS. Along with the same lines of stupidity as "healing rotations". You use Riptide when its needed, and its definitely not always needed every 5 seconds.
When you're tank healing the cooldown reduction is pretty decent, as the main threat to tanks is huge burst damage, and it allows you to LHW/HW and stick a Riptide straight after for pretty big burst healing more often SHOULD the tanks get hit to quite low health fairly often.
But people talking about using Riptide every cooldown in a nice "Rotation" with chain heal while raid healing just make me cringe.
Well, I both agree and disagree with you. Yes, I'm likeminded when it comes to 'healing rotations' as I believe there are none. But on the other hand, for one, I'm not talking about healing rotations at all, but looking into how useful do other people find a 1 less second on RT cooldown. And regarding the matter of it always being up, of course I don't throw them around on full hp people just for the sake of it, but the fact is that I can't think of a fight right now when there are no people taking damage at any given moment, there's always someone that can benefit from a rolling HoT, be it even just preHoTing a tank for an AF proc / over time healing.
And yes, if there's a group of melee geniouses not letting standing in fire disrupt their dps, I'm certainly not gonna waste a GCD on a RT before throwing a CH on them only cause it looks like a good 'rotation' in theory.
Zulwak - I recently broke 2T8 myself. I had it so long that it's really messed with my healing style on certain fights. I generally use RT as my first "go-to" heal when, say, a fire pops up under someone or a tank drops low (when it's not my job to heal them, and I'm just helping out). Some fights I don't use it more often than it takes to keep the HoT up on the tank, but for the fights where I do, I find myself hitting the button with < 1 sec left on the CD now a lot, thanks to an innate sense of what the CDs are on my spells. You're not the only one!
To actually answer your question, though, once you get re-used to the original CD on Riptide and adjust your reaction to raid damage accordingly, dropping the set bonus is fine. You'll get more out of the stats (that affect all your spells) from significantly higher item level gear than you will from a lower CD on a fairly situational spell. On a related note, the only non-set 245 chests I know of are [Chestguard of Flowing Elements] and [Ensorcelled Nerubian Breastplate], so I'm assuming you're referring to one of these. If you have a steady income of Triumph from doing the daily and as many as you can of the 10 and 25 man raids that drop Triumph, you'll probably get more out of even the ilvl 232 T9 chest, simply because it's so much better itemized, as the only piece of the set with no mp5. (Unless you're having mana problems, in which case I'm confused. )
On a related note, the only non-set 245 chests I know of are [Chestguard of Flowing Elements] and [Ensorcelled Nerubian Breastplate], so I'm assuming you're referring to one of these. If you have a steady income of Triumph from doing the daily and as many as you can of the 10 and 25 man raids that drop Triumph, you'll probably get more out of even the ilvl 232 T9 chest, simply because it's so much better itemized, as the only piece of the set with no mp5.
If you're willing to wear cloth, [Merlin's Robe] is perfectly itemized.
Originally Posted by Willyshatner
As far as breaking the T8 2pc for assorted off-pieces goes, I don't think that will be something that I do. This is mainly due to the fact that I am pretty happy with the stats I have now and I don't have any off-pieces for my helm and gloves that would give me a noticeable stat increase in the areas I care about the most (haste).
If you step outside the idea that it's "for" an elemental shaman, [Nobundo's Helm of Triumph] is an amazing off set resto helm -- certainly far better stats than the resto tier 9 equivalent.
If you have the T8 2pc and/or the glyph of riptide, then I think the 2pc bonus can still serve a purpose on fights where you want to roll riptides on multiple (read: 4+) targets. This, however, has not been the case for me with most of the fights in ToC. I've dropped the glyph in favor of the chain heal glyph (currently use ES, LHW, and CH glyphs), but I still have the 2pc bonus because it allows me to keep up riptides on 3 targets or roll riptides on two targets and have a free cast for an "oh snap!" moment.
I definitely wouldn't say I have a healing rotation, but I think I'm with the majority of the resto shaman community when I say I've just become familiar with the practice of using riptide when it comes off cooldown and the extra second the T8 snips off has made me a bit spoiled. I haven't done any healing in ToC without the 2pc to date, but I don't imagine I will miss it much when I eventually replace it with T9.
As far as breaking the T8 2pc for assorted off-pieces goes, I don't think that will be something that I do. This is mainly due to the fact that I am pretty happy with the stats I have now and I don't have any off-pieces for my helm and gloves that would give me a noticeable stat increase in the areas I care about the most (haste).
Overall it seems this will be a case by case decision for everyone based on various factors such as available gear, healing style/assignment, etc., but here's my 2 cents.
Cheers for the replies.
On the offset chests, I'm using the Flowing Elements one, nonheroic version, while waiting to grab a hold of the ilvl245 T9 one. As for rolling riptides, I've never done that and I've never used the RT glyph, I've always used ES, LHW and CH ones and those have served me more than well so far.
As someone has also mentioned passive mp5 on gear and it's current use to us, I'm also puzzled for how much of it should I aim for really. I'm currently sitting on something like 320mp5 while casting self-buffed (WS only). While I'm not having mana issues, I don't know how my mana will act up on some more challenging fights my guild is only starting nowadays (Algalon10 and ToC25 heroic mostly). So if someone has some numbers on how much mana during an average duration fight we actually get from passive mp5 from gear in comparison to other sources, would be much obliged.
Somewhat regarding the poster above me... I've just recently broken my 2pc T8 bonus for an offset 245 chest and I can say that I'm starting to feel the loss of the set bonus, actually automatically trying to fire off my RT at it's old 5sec cooldown rate only to get hit by the nasty 'Spell not ready yet'. Now, even though the new offset chest is sweeter purely statwise, I'm wondering how valuable are you guys finding the above mentioned set bonus. Having a hard time to figure out it's 'worth'. Cheers up front
Shaman_Hep makes an attempt at telling you how often you are actually using your 2pc T8 bonus though I've never been able to really confirm that it is correct (no reason to believe it isn't except the number is so low). What I found was that I actually was using it FAR less than I thought I was, even with PowerAuras notifying me that Riptide was available and 5 seconds ticking off in my head. It was something on the order of 1% of my Riptide casts that took advantage of it. Note: this parse was post 3.2, before that I was using it a lot more with the RT/LHW/LHW casting style. Perhaps it is just my play style, but post 3.2 a 5-second cooldown just doesn't seem to work well with the cast time of my other spells, especially the longer cast times of LHW and Chain Heal (which is now used much more).
Also.. even with 2pc T9 I've been trying to get out of the (endless 5-man for badges) habit of using RT as my "emergency heal" when NS is on cooldown. It just doesn't hit hard enough to eat a GCD for. If tidal waves is up, HW will hit before the next swing timer and hit for ~4x as much. If not, LHW will also hit before the next swing timer and hit for 2x as much AND can be followed with an instant riptide if you are very worried. If I'm using Riptide it is normally to keep the HOT effect up on a tank, to pop a small quick heal on a DPS that shouldn't be taking damage (in which case the HOT effect may actually be useful for them and I can go back to something else), or to prep for a huge Chain Heal.
Shaman_Hep makes an attempt at telling you how often you are actually using your 2pc T8 bonus though I've never been able to really confirm that it is correct (no reason to believe it isn't except the number is so low). What I found was that I actually was using it FAR less than I thought I was, even with PowerAuras notifying me that Riptide was available and 5 seconds ticking off in my head. It was something on the order of 1% of my Riptide casts that took advantage of it. Note: this parse was post 3.2, before that I was using it a lot more with the RT/LHW/LHW casting style. Perhaps it is just my play style, but post 3.2 a 5-second cooldown just doesn't seem to work well with the cast time of my other spells, especially the longer cast times of LHW and Chain Heal (which is now used much more).
This is the same situation I've run into; I've never been one to attempt to spam Riptide every cooldown, even when going heavy LHW I had enough Haste to keep the LHW cast time very low. I've found that around 5% of my casts come between the 5 and 6 second mark, as religiously as anyone could possibly spam Riptide, I just don't see that number being higher than around 50%. 2pc t9, is far superior to 2pc t8, and in terms of double set bonuses - you're better off using 2pc t9 + various 245+ offpieces than going 2pc t9 and 2pc t8 like I see some people setting up for.
I notice that all shaman seem to be using the standard MH/Shield combo, and I have always done the same.
However, now that staves are enchantable, and the benefit of their enchant relative to a MH enchant (18 spellpower) seems about even, or better than the shield enchant (25 intellect), depending on your HEP calculations, are any of you rolling on staves now?
Yesterday [Perdition] dropped, and given how haste-hungry chain heal makes me, and I can't figure out how I could get 136 haste out of a MH/shield combo at the same iLvl, I think it may have been a reasonable upgrade. I ended up passing it to a mage, because I wanted to do some more research.
Is the benefit of the shield now only the armor bonus, or are people generally finding the itemization of an MH/Shield to be stronger, regardless of the enchant?
I notice that all shaman seem to be using the standard MH/Shield combo, and I have always done the same.
However, now that staves are enchantable, and the benefit of their enchant relative to a MH enchant (18 spellpower) seems about even, or better than the shield enchant (25 intellect), depending on your HEP calculations, are any of you rolling on staves now?
Yesterday [Perdition] dropped, and given how haste-hungry chain heal makes me, and I can't figure out how I could get 136 haste out of a MH/shield combo at the same iLvl, I think it may have been a reasonable upgrade. I ended up passing it to a mage, because I wanted to do some more research.
Is the benefit of the shield now only the armor bonus, or are people generally finding the itemization of an MH/Shield to be stronger, regardless of the enchant?
Looking at wowhead using the following HEP values:
Haste rating = 1.2
Crit rating =0.64
Int = 0.67
Spell power = 1
Mp5 = 1
Looking only at 245 items
MH + shield [Heartsmasher] + [Bastion of Purity]
172HEP +48HEP = 220HEP combined
enchant: 63 spell + 25 int = 63 + (.67)*25 = 63 + 16.75 = 79.75
total: 220 + 79.75 = 299.75
2 hander: [Enlightenment]
218 HEP
enchant: 81 spell
total = 218+ 81 = 299HEP
I am currently sitting at about 3/4 245 gear and our guild is working on downing 25 TOC Heroic NRBs. In saying that I am the #2 healer we have to a resto druid that just hots every person in the raid basically so how can you compete with that. My question is what stats are you all seeing benefit tank healers the most? Currently we have a holy paladin (w/beacon), a disc priest, and myself healing the 2 tanks were using. I know that the MP5 is a slight issue but with Tide and a innervate I can get to phase 3 reliably without going OOM so I took almost all my MP5 gear off and have a current crit rate of 35%, i'm at 880 haste, and raid buffed I'm sitting right around 3800SP.
All that said the reason why I ask what stats I should be going for is that one of our tanks is a warrior and he dies 90% of the time if its a tank that dies. I know he cant bubble out of the impales but still I feel like I should be able to do more. I'm right behind the resto druid on the charts at right around 5500 HPS on NRBs but if you have any suggestions please let me know, either gear, stats, rotations whatever.
I am currently sitting at about 3/4 245 gear and our guild is working on downing 25 TOC Heroic NRBs. In saying that I am the #2 healer we have to a resto druid that just hots every person in the raid basically so how can you compete with that. My question is what stats are you all seeing benefit tank healers the most? Currently we have a holy paladin (w/beacon), a disc priest, and myself healing the 2 tanks were using. I know that the MP5 is a slight issue but with Tide and a innervate I can get to phase 3 reliably without going OOM so I took almost all my MP5 gear off and have a current crit rate of 35%, i'm at 880 haste, and raid buffed I'm sitting right around 3800SP.
All that said the reason why I ask what stats I should be going for is that one of our tanks is a warrior and he dies 90% of the time if its a tank that dies. I know he cant bubble out of the impales but still I feel like I should be able to do more. I'm right behind the resto druid on the charts at right around 5500 HPS on NRBs but if you have any suggestions please let me know, either gear, stats, rotations whatever.
-Swam
First of all you aren't competing with your druid. Healing is a team effort and usually involves different roles. Druids are most likely the strongest healers in the game (from a pure effective hps standpoint) stop worrying about trying to win meters.
NRB is very dependent on the tank rotation and the tank's use of cooldowns. You can BOP the tank to remove the debuff however. Basically I switch between chain heal (if the tanks have less than 3 debuffs) then spam RT HW HW HW/LHW when 3 or more. Basically I just try to keep ancestral fort up and if they have 3-4 debuffs don't stop healing for any reason. I literally had the tank die because I refreshed water shield. This is the fight that made me decide I needed to stack more haste for HW. 800ish seems like a good amount so I think your gear is fine. In my experience Pallys and Druids seem far less likely to die so its really up to your war to manage his cooldowns effectively (and if you aren't bopping him that has also worked well for our guild).
Looking at wowhead using the following HEP values:
Haste rating = 1.2
Crit rating =0.64
Int = 0.67
Spell power = 1
Mp5 = 1
Looking only at 245 items
MH + shield [Heartsmasher] + [Bastion of Purity]
172HEP +48HEP = 220HEP combined
enchant: 63 spell + 25 int = 63 + (.67)*25 = 63 + 16.75 = 79.75
total: 220 + 79.75 = 299.75
2 hander: [Enlightenment]
218 HEP
enchant: 81 spell
total = 218+ 81 = 299HEP
So I'd say staves are pretty equal
Equal in HEP... maybe but your still looking at the non-heroic shield so they arent really equal to start with and the extra damage you will take in a raid from not wearing a shield = less healer mana so I wouldnt ever roll on a stave for the following reasons...
1. Your taking loot from DPS that need it more
2. You are limiting your armor/mitigation for every fight
3. You are getting less overall HEP with no real benefit
Equal in HEP... maybe but your still looking at the non-heroic shield so they arent really equal to start with and the extra damage you will take in a raid from not wearing a shield = less healer mana so I wouldnt ever roll on a stave for the following reasons...
1. Your taking loot from DPS that need it more
2. You are limiting your armor/mitigation for every fight
3. You are getting less overall HEP with no real benefit
my 2 cents
Just a note, the Heroic shield is iLvl258, so it wouldn't really be a fair comparison either.
The note about losing the armor/mitigation is a fair point. Again, I don't know if you can say you're getting less overall HEP- everyone's HEP is a little different. If you are at the point where intellect is not serving you very well, the benefit of the shield diminishes relative to the fixed spellpower on the staff. Beyond that, I think that Daidalos' shows that the healer-stat itemization for both choices are fairly even.
Equal in HEP... maybe but your still looking at the non-heroic shield so they arent really equal to start with and the extra damage you will take in a raid from not wearing a shield = less healer mana so I wouldnt ever roll on a stave for the following reasons...
1. Your taking loot from DPS that need it more
2. You are limiting your armor/mitigation for every fight
3. You are getting less overall HEP with no real benefit
my 2 cents
This assumes that you take his HEP values as being absolutely correct for every Shaman in every situation. I'm pretty consistently getting Haste values at 1.7-2.4 these days and I would seriously debate using a staff for a pretty large majority of fights.
Your best option is to download Shaman_HEP and make your own decisions - these stat weights aren't the only thing that determines your gearing, but they definitely factor into my decisions when I get down to building a set of gear.
Equal in HEP... maybe but your still looking at the non-heroic shield so they arent really equal to start with and the extra damage you will take in a raid from not wearing a shield = less healer mana so I wouldnt ever roll on a stave for the following reasons...
1. Your taking loot from DPS that need it more
2. You are limiting your armor/mitigation for every fight
3. You are getting less overall HEP with no real benefit
my 2 cents
As I said I was comparing all ilvl 245 items. If 10H is out of reach of your guild for some reason, but 25 N is then pick your gear accordingly.
1. You assume this this is the case. I could see plenty of situations where this is not the case. Its something to keep in mind if it is the case though. Also keep in mind that many dps casters prefer MH + OH as well. Wouldn't hurt to ask if everyone is ok with you taking the item.
2. If you want to assign armor some sort of HEP rating feel free to do so. Most of the dmg you take is not mitigated by armor so I don't really feel swayed by this argument.
3. I don't see how you can make this point without showing some math to back this up. If the staff drops and no MH does how would taking it be no benefit? I said they were basically equal not that everyone should ditch the same HEP MH and OH for a staff. Lets say you have a 232 mh and oh or lower a 245 staff drops should you take it? Math says yes.
Also just saying that "my haste is HEP is high so I am not going to take a staff" dosen't really make any sense. Staves have haste and if you looked at the one I linked it has a lot (117(+8) haste with 2 yellow socks and a blue sock for a potential or 117+20+20+20 or 117+20+20+10/(5 mp5)+8 haste)
I am currently sitting at about 3/4 245 gear and our guild is working on downing 25 TOC Heroic NRBs. In saying that I am the #2 healer we have to a resto druid that just hots every person in the raid basically so how can you compete with that. My question is what stats are you all seeing benefit tank healers the most? Currently we have a holy paladin (w/beacon), a disc priest, and myself healing the 2 tanks were using. I know that the MP5 is a slight issue but with Tide and a innervate I can get to phase 3 reliably without going OOM so I took almost all my MP5 gear off and have a current crit rate of 35%, i'm at 880 haste, and raid buffed I'm sitting right around 3800SP.
All that said the reason why I ask what stats I should be going for is that one of our tanks is a warrior and he dies 90% of the time if its a tank that dies. I know he cant bubble out of the impales but still I feel like I should be able to do more. I'm right behind the resto druid on the charts at right around 5500 HPS on NRBs but if you have any suggestions please let me know, either gear, stats, rotations whatever.
-Swam
Make sure you are timing a HW to hit the tank after the impale. Run CH through the tank on the staggering stomps too. Your stats are fine, and like Daidalos said, healing is a team effort. Figure out how your healing team can mesh together and such.
Make sure you are timing a HW to hit the tank after the impale. Run CH through the tank on the staggering stomps too. Your stats are fine, and like Daidalos said, healing is a team effort. Figure out how your healing team can mesh together and such.
Learning to heal with your guild mates is probably the most important aspect of healing. Understanding how they react to situations greatly impacts how you need to do so as well. Strong communication between your healers will improve the flow of your raid. I've had the best success in healing when know each other's strengths and play to those to keep the tanks and raid alive while also complimenting the other healers weaknesses. The most dangerous infection that can spread amongst healers is the distribution of healing meters. If it is the only metric used to determine the success or failure of your healers then the healer meter is going to show you terrible results. For example, back in SSC, I had an enhance shaman that I would spam heal to keep him alive during Leothras the Blind's whirlwind phase. It put me squarely on top of the healing meters, but mostly just wasted heals so we could both flex our epeens.
But regardless of generalities, there are so many variables in how your healing team can function that trying to give on the spot advice is pretty difficult. Talk with your healing team and figure out what they are doing on the fight, where your roles overlap, and where you can optomize for more success.
Star wars characters on the Goon-infested Veela server: Pdxmarcos (Sith Inquisitor - 50), Pdx'marcos (Bounty hunter - 45)
* 2 Pieces (Heal): Your Riptide spell grants 20% spell haste for your next spellcast.
* 4 Pieces (Heal): Your Chain Heal critical strikes cause the target to heal for 25% of the healed amount.
10/02/09, 1:22 PM
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